


The Fight’s Just Started

by MackenzieTheHuntress



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Battle of Wakanda (Avengers: Infinity War), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MackenzieTheHuntress/pseuds/MackenzieTheHuntress
Summary: What if Bucky didn’t get dusted during the Snap?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	The Fight’s Just Started

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story MONTHS ago and just now finished the ending. I hope you all enjoy!   
> I've been out of the writing game for a couple of years so try not to judge too harshly!

Wakanda. The once exuberant kingdom responsible for Bucky’s rehabilitation has been reduced to ashes and blood. Another battlefield. 

Death and carnage is doomed to follow him everywhere, he thinks as he loads another magazine into his M249 Paratrooper. The pungent smell of gunpowder tickles his nostrils and suddenly he’s back in Nazi, Germany. The Reich hadn’t lasted a thousand years, but the fight surely seemed to. What Hydra had done to him is the reason he’s on the battlefield now. He’d have it no other way, though.

A bright flash of golden energy pulls him from his thousand yard stare and his mind drifts to her - the cataclysmic force of the battlefield. He’d been enamored with her since she’d broken Hydra’s spell back in DC. 

“That’s not a good disguise.” She’d said to him, her voice smooth and nonchalant. He’d recognized her immediately, felt the familiar sensation of her - the low vibration and hum of her otherworldly power. 

He had turned around and stared as if he were a panicked deer caught in the headlights of an encroaching vehicle. An eternity passed before he found the courage to speak. “Are...are you going to tell him?” His voice wavered, fearing the loyalty to her captain. 

She snorted and his jaw ticked. 

“No, but he’s looking for you. You do know that, don’t you?” She smiled. He’d remember that smile for the rest of his life, he thought, even if they try to make him forget. 

“I’m not the man he remembers.” He looked away from her burning gaze, he regrets it now. It’d felt intrusive then, but he’d realized, in time, she’d only wanted to help him. 

“How could you be?” She asked. “How could you possibly be the man Steve remembers when you don’t remember?” A few clicks of her heels off the marble floors of the Smithsonian and she’d closed the distance between them. They echo in his imagination. She’d gently cupped his chin, refusing to retreat when he’d flinched and looked deeply into the cerulean depths of his eyes. “Let me help you, James.” 

“It’s Bucky.” He corrected, feeling the sincerity in her vibrations. 

She’d lived up to her promise. For two years she’d moved him from safe house to safe house, never staying in the same place for long. In those painfully short years, he’d fallen in love with her and her with him. He knew the fight would eventually come and it did, but she never left his side. Not even now, not on this battlefield. 

Another eruption of gold magic and his eyes find their way over her glowing figure. She’s wrapped around the form of the Outrider princess, Proxima Midnight, using her power to bring the enemies blood to a boil. 

He decides he can’t look for long, the time isn’t right. He’ll admire her later, when the fight is over. If the fight ever ends, he worries momentarily. Bucky uses his fear as a sword of determination and fights off Thanos’ horde with a newfound vigor. 

He’s coated in alien blood and entrails when he looses sight of her. The battle had gotten dicey and she’d been needed elsewhere - to protect Vision. Panic takes over his senses and he becomes reckless, each shot he takes is less calculated than the last. Bullets that should’ve felled his enemy caused nothing but flesh wounds and scratches on armor. 

It’s then he decides she’s his weakness. It’d never been a problem in the past, then again, they’ve never fought off the goddamn apocalypse before. 

He puts a few bullets into the unlucky soul that wandered into his line of fire, watching as the life slips from its monstrous body. The small victory of a dead enemy is perverted by thoughts of her. Thoughts of her lifeless body laying in the mud and the blood before him. 

It’s Steve who pulls him from his haze this time, attempting to invigorate his friend - his Bucky. His tactics fall short, however, because he isn’t Steve’s Bucky any longer - he’s hers and she’s nowhere to be found. Bucky realizes he’s can still feel her magics - the golden, guiding light of her power. He follows it like a beacon, leaving Steve in the dust. 

Her vibrations lead him across the battlefield - through pockets of Wakandan warriors, under Thor’s lightning storm, and around the crater he assumed Banner made out of some sorry son of a bitch. 

Bucky fights his way across the war torn soil to her - his love lost in the madness. It’s when he reaches her glowing form that the battlefield falls unnaturally quiet. 

“Oh, Buck...” She speaks mournfully when she sees him. 

Her voice, no matter how sullen it sounds, is like gospel to him. He wraps his arms around her, blissfully unaware of the tragedy surrounding them. 

“Baby” she starts again, “baby...we lost”. 

Her body begins to tremble and the spell is broken. Bucky opens his eyes and pulls back from the embrace, taking in their surroundings. The air is thick with smoke and...wait, is that ash? He wonders. 

Bucky’s worst fear is confirmed as he gazes into her eyes and sees tears begin to spill over onto her cheeks. She looks scared and confused, and before he knows it, she begins to fade away into dust.

The curve of her hip disappears from underneath his hands, the smell of her presence no longer permeates through the air, and suddenly she’s gone…

For the first time since he’s met her, Bucky’s world falls silent. There’s no more golden light, no more soothing ebb and flow of energy; the vibrations of her life force gone. It’s still - maddeningly quiet, he thinks. 

Bucky spots Steve across the battlefield, running to him. To comfort him, he assumes. There’s no comfort to be given, no comfort to be had. There’s only one thought running through his head and that’s to find his way back to her – the only way he knows how.

“The fight’s just started” he whispers.


End file.
